How to Use OneNote to Create Your Commonplace

If you are anything like most people, you probably spend way too much time in front of the computer–and know it. But what if there was a way to make that time more productive?

Such a way exists. It’s called writing–and you don’t have to be an aspiring author to do it. You simply need to create a commonplace and take a shitload of notes that you store in appropriate categories. This will make it easier for your mind to deal with all the information, and you’ll actually be inclined to gather more of it.

A few months from now, you will be surprised by how much smarter you’ll be–and how many things you have learned. I can honestly say that when I started keeping my digital commonplace like 1.5 years ago, it was the single most important thing I have ever done in terms of my self-development.

In this article I’m going to give you a peek into my comprehensive system for commonplacing by using the note-taking program OneNote.

I’ll tell you:

Why I use my commonplace

Some examples of how you can use your digital commonplace (OneNote)

15 things I study, track, or use my commonplace for

Tips and resources to use OneNote more efficiently

How to organize/reorganize your OneNote commonplace to fit your goals

These things may seem trivial, but I assure you that they are not.

We have only just entered the information age where the knowledge worker thrives. This means that managing information is becoming increasingly important for anyone who wants to become successful.

Why I Use My Commonplace

For me these are the main reasons:

To organize all information into concrete categories. This makes it easier for my mind to memorize the information and use it for its intended purpose later.

Napoleon Bonaparte was blessed with a brain that automatically categorized information in “separate drawers” that he could open or close any time he wanted. I am not that lucky, but fortunately for me, I live in an age where I can leverage technology to do the same thing.

To learn things more quickly. Similar to above, a commonplace makes it quick and easy for you to store and organize all interesting information. But the real trick lies in creating categories. This makes it easier for you to learn things, because you immediately associate it with examples backed up by facts that you have gathered.

To synthesize information. This is done by mixing different information and ideas, letting them blend together in your mind, and eventually reaching a synthesis where they become combined and you come up with a “new” idea.

All of three of these things are highly scalable, meaning that if you use your commonplace every day you will end up with huge amounts of information. Assuming that you have done a good job categorizing this information, you can then use it to see patterns more clearly than other people–people who use less efficient tools for organizing information.

As your commonplace grows, you will have to prune or reorganize the information once in a while. Otherwise it will become hard to navigate it, which means that you’ll waste time. The problem is that it sneaks up on you, and you don’t want to reorganize your commonplace. Because it’s boring.

But you definitely should.

Here’s how:

Keep it easy to manage: Know your categories well so that whenever you come across useful information you know exactly where to put it, thus saving yourself time.

Keep it easy to navigate: The main strength of using OneNote instead of a physical commonplace is that in OneNote it’s easier to accumulate a lot of info (copy-paste, screenshots, writing on keyboard) tag it, and easily search for it. But ideally, you shouldn’t have to search much. You should know where things are because you’ve set up your commonplace to be easy to navigate.

If your OneNote commonplace is easy to manage and navigate, it saves you much time in the long-term. And more perhaps more importantly, you’ll be inclined to using it more often.

Napoleon Hill said the following:

Knowledge, general in nature and unorganized, is not POWER; it is only potential power–the material out of which real power may be developed. Any modern library contains an unorganized record of all the knowledge of value to which the present stage of civilization is heir, but this knowledge is not power because it is not organized.

And it’s true. Your information isn’t particularly useful unless it’s organized, and unless you make it easy to manage and navigate. If you don’t do this it’ll be harder to for you implement your ideas.

–And ideas don’t mean shit until you implement them.

Examples of How You Can Use Your Commonplace

Despite having built the SGM website, and getting compliments from some people about its design, the fact is that I suck at web design and programming. But I do have a very strong intuition. When I see something that I like I retain it in OneNote and find some way of using it.

If I see something I think is elegant I just copy it to my commonplace. I take a print screen, and I copy the CSS/HTML code. Then I experiment with it later when I can find the time. I don’t multitask. I want to have a large bulk of uninterrupted time so that I can get into a flow state and experiment with it until I am satisfied.

By doing this, I get a lot of good case studies that I can review and tinker with later when I have time. I compile a lot of related information, then digest it in a long sitting.

Here are some examples of things/lists you’ll want to compile and then go through it:

Topics/essays. Anything you’d want to write about

Useful tips and heuristics (helpful rules of thumb). Rules for you to live by

A list of ideas/strategies. It doesn’t necessarily have to be business ideas, just make sure you write down your ideas, store them, and implement them!

Journal. Run through the events of the day: it improves your memory and it’s a good excuse to write more and to reflect on the day. Here’s an example of how I format my journal:

Date

Weekday

Brief overview of the day

Different times when I am writing in the journal.

Daily lessons. Like a summary of the journal entry. What did you learn today? This one gets powerful over time

To-do lists. I keep a few different ones. I keep my generalto-do list, which contains the most immediate/important things at the top of my journal to make sure I get exposed to it many times per day. You could do it differently though. There are lots of templates that you can use if you’d like. Here’s an example of a modified to-do list, as per Stephen Covey:

New words in other languages. As soon as you find a new word, put it in, and write the definition. If you’re ambitious you could also write some synonyms

Stocks or financial numbers. Put information, links, and relevant dates here. When did you buy the share? What was the return on investment last year?

Notes. Keep notes on the books you read on your computer or articles/blog posts you read online

A list of good books, music, clothes, (insert item)you want to buy ordownload. You can then take a day and go through the lists in bulk to save time and concentration

A list of available jobs you’d like to apply to. And the necessary information or requirements

A list of interesting gigs on Fiverr, odesk, or similar outsourcing sites. You never know when it might come in handy

A list of contact information for interesting people you will contact soon, or will want to contact later when the time is right

Copy/study/steal: This is an important one. . .

—Because we learn mainly through imitation. Picasso spent his first 10 years copying other people, then he developed his own style. Napoleon read all biographies and war-related documents from all great warlords and generals before him, then he perfected his own military tactics. Einstein read most of the important texts on physics and philosophy, tinkered with gadgets, and made experiments from the time he was 10-25+ years old, before beginning his work on relativity.

Point being: it is rare that people succeed before first studying and imitating the masters who came before them. You should do the same. No need to reinvent the wheel. More on this at the end of the article.

13 Things I Study, Track, or Use My OneNote Commonplace for

Except for the things on the list above, here are some other things I keep categories for in OneNote:

Studying bios of successful people (how they made up their own titles). What are they selectively communicating with the limited amount of space?

Study landing pages

Studying email marketing

School and extracurricular activity schedule

Passwords and security-related things that I want to easily look up. Obviously nothing too private, just in case. You may want to use OneNote’s password protect function to keep this section safe

Book & product ideas, and various ways of making money

Book titles of best-selling books

Workout results

Food I eat and amount of meals per day

When I wake up and go to bed

There’s actually a lot more. But these are the main ones that I figured you might find useful or interesting.

How to Organize Your OneNote Commonplace

Here are some big ideas to get you started by coming up with the right categories to start compiling information:

Think about what your goals and aspirations are. Write them down. Then make a section for each of these things in OneNote

Think about what fields of knowledge you need to study to achieve your goals. Then make these your categories inside of the sections

Here’s a model of what I mean:

And here’s how those three sections of categories would look like in OneNote:

(Note: I just copy pasted 3 tabs into the image below for convenience sake so that I didn’t have to use 3 images)

Make your copy/study/steal categories. The best people in any niche are the best for a reason. Why? That’s for them to know, and for you to find out.

Study the best people in your field and gather their best material. See if you can find commonalities and similar strategies used by the best people in different niches.

If the the best people in your field have blogs or websites, get on their mailing lists and save all the useful things to your commonplace to sift through when you have time. Then study it in bulk to find the patterns.

Go back to this material every once in a while for inspiration, to copy it, to learn from it, and to use what works. Then make it your own, like Picasso.

Think about what people you look up to and would like to learn from

Watch their (TED) talks if they have any. Take notes. Copy the interesting stuff from their Wikipedia pages or sites. Read articles about them. In my commonplace I call this section “studying people”. Most of my guys are dead.

Tips and Resources To Use OneNote Efficiently:

First I’ll tell you 3 of my favorite things, then I’ll show you some useful external resources for more studies if you’d like.

And don’t worry, it’s all free.

#1: Getting rid of black pages

For some reason, OneNote can turn out black pages. It sucks. Here’s how you fix it:

Press “format”. This will pop up the screen to the right where you can select different formats.

Select “auto”.

Fixed. The page is no longer black!

#2: Alphabetazing your pages

Check out this article, download the zip-file, extract it, and you should be good to go. Here’s how you use the add-in in OneNote:

Click “Add-ins” (mine is called “tillägg” in Swedish)

Click “Sort Pages”. It loads a while.

All your pages are alphabetically sorted.

#3: Linking to another page/section inside of your OneNote commonplace

This is a highly useful function that I admittedly don’t use enough. But I should. Instead I just write something like “get info/cross-reference from section XYZ”. And it works, because I know the organization of my commonplace very well and can navigate through it easily. But I’d save more time if I did this.

(Note: it’s the same way you link to a website.)

Click “Insert” (Swedish = Infoga)

Click “Link” (Swedish = Länka)

A box pops up and you can choose a section inside your notebooks

External resources for OneNote:

I’ve told you about why you should use OneNote to keep your commonplace and how I do it. But I haven’t told you how to use the software. Because I think it’s very easy and intuitive. But if you think otherwise, check out the following resources to learn how to use OneNote:

Recommended Posts

Comments

Do you have a way of integrating your digital commonplace with your hand written notebooks of book summaries? I have a lot of paper notebooks and I’ve been pondering how best to integrate them with or reference them in my digital commonplace.

Nope. That’s a problem.
But I choose to look at it as two different functions. Digital = short and useful. Written = stimulate thought and mental associations; like a creative practice.
You could always take pictures and insert into the digital commonplace thought.

Thanks, I have tried several times earlier to use EverNote but never managed to organize it in a way I could use it efficiently every day. Now I will definitely be able to do so.
I have tried OneNote and find it’s PC version much better than EverNote – it has much, much more text editing options (because of Word ofc) and it is more visually appealing. And I think it allows for one more level of categories (in Evernote you have Notebook stacks > Notebooks > Notes.

But it still use Evernote because of its much better Android app. Firstly, it has great text-to-speech integration (English version works quite good) so wherever I am I can take notes quickly because i hate typing. It is especially useful for taking notes while reading.
And secondly, you can take pictures of text documents and search for text in images.
Is this comparison right or OneNote also has these options, but I am unable to find them?

Ludvig, congratulations on an excellent article & an excellent website. I have added the RSS to my newsreader.
I started off organising my info by using Evernote about 18 months ago. However, after about 15 months I came to the conclusion that it is really no more than a good digital filing cabinet for documents & records, which can be retrieved quickly because of Evernote’s very good search parameters.
However, the other type of information like you sketched out above just sits passively in Evernote, but the app is not designed to let you make the mental connections to let you grow spiritually, which is what OneNote is much better at. Until I read this article & the one “how to keep a digital commonplace” I kept searching for a way to get ahead, to grow, to attain what you aptly call self-development. Then I came across these 2 articles (thanks to CleverClogs’ OneNote Community Notebook), which were real eyeopeners for me. I realised that unknowingly I had in fact already started composing my Commonplace Book. But now I can move on & organise my info along the line of a real CB. By the way, I did not know the term until I discovered it here.
I have 1 question that has been intriguing me for quite a while. How do you ensure that the info you collect remains relevant. You have collected a few 1000 pages in 1.5 (= 1 & a half) years. In your comments above you mention that one needs to make it easy to manage & navigate. But surely sooner or later certain info loses relevance, becomes obsolete, ….
How do you keep on top of that & cut out the “weeds”?

CleverClogs mentions your post “How to Use Your OneNote to Create Your Commonplace” in the OneNote Community Notebooks, which, in combination with your other post “How to Keep a Digital Commonplace” was exactly what I was looking for to grow from all the info I collect about subjects of interest.
I started using Evernote last year, which is a very good app in many respects, but at the end of the day I find it is no more than a digital filing cabinet, which I now use to store documents & records.
OneNote’s organisation set-up is much more suitable for a Commonplace Book than Evernote.
So, thanks a lot for those 2 articles. But there are others on your site that I will look at too when I am ready.
Keep up the good work.

Ludvig what a great article, thank you for inspiring me to take my brain organizing seriously. I’ve been using a program to do so for only 2 days, and I already feel an improvement. Being able to quickly organize any new facts I discover as important in their rightful, future accessible category puts your mind at ease. You don’t need to jot it down in a notebook or text file you may never remember or think about at the time of needing it, it’s just inconvenient using it any other way than having a centralized database of everything important to you. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to anything else.

–Definitely agree. I can’t imagine keeping 1000 Word docs like I used to. Plus OneNote is so much more seamless and beautiful. My only problem is that my two most frequent pages are huge:
–My journal
–My page where I write on topics & essays

Hey Ludvig,
I started using OneNote a bit since reading this post a few days ago and i have now found a way to organize my notes (a good system) that works for me… My question is this: Why/when do you use the macros or for examplr the TOC?

Good for you DRILON.
I don’t use the macros very often. But I thought I’d include them for the people who like that sort of thing, and want to make their own. And yes, the TOC takes a while. but it’s good when for example:
1. You’re in a large text document of ideas.
2. You’re made notes on a book (and structured them after the book’s chapters). — just remember to always use the headings 1-3 for it to work.

At the moment I keep everything in separate folders/sub folders in word and I keep all to-do lists in my head – which works well but after reading this it would definitely be nice to have everything in 1 location.

Which, thinking about it, would mean it wouldn’t take me 30 minutes to locate a lost blog post, all because I renamed it and couldn’t remember what it was called or where it was stored.

Great as always, Ludvig. For those who, like me, want something a bit more simple, there’s Workflowy, available on the website or as a Chrome app. For password storing and protection there’s LassPass for all major browsers. For storing all articles you read and other links, there’s Pocket, again, for all major browsers and Chrome app. If you want to write in the cloud but, like me, don’t trust Google and MS, there’s Zoho Docs. All the best.

Hey Alexander,
Thanks for sharing those tips. I just looked into them briefly. I like to keep everything in one place, though. But, I was impressed with LastPass, and got it!
Two questions:
1. Have you tried Trello?
2. Regarding not trusting Google, do you use Startpage?

Hey Ludvig,
Thanks for the follow-up. LP is pretty great and has many options to keep passwords secure, be sure to check everything about it when you have the time.
1. I haven’t tried Trello, do you recommend it?
2. I tried SP a few times, it seems really really bad. I generally use duckduckgo and sometimes Google.
About OneNote, is it free now?
All the best.

Oscar,
Sweet. Yes I saw it when you first began. I should hope you have a lot more material in there now. As for copying code, try out:https://getfirebug.com/
It’s free and nice. I much prefer it over the original web version that comes with the browser.

Great post Ludvig, and woah you blow me away with your daily schedule. Recently, I personally use Evernote for things you’ve listed in this post and it has increased my productivity in some ways. Are you familiar with it at all?

A caveat that is worth noting is that OneNote was not available (in any meaningful way) for Mac users until last month. It is now, although its not as functional as the Windows equivalent.

I used OneNote extensively until I migrated onto a Mac and it was the application that I missed most of all. Evernote is the closest equivalent, but it is much less intuitive in the way it enables you to manage and categorise different sets of information.

I am now trying to work out whether it is worth moving my Evernote commonplace back to OneNote…

sure, I’ll send some through separately. However, this may well be a deal-breaker for you. Even the most recent version of OneNote for Mac has big limitations (e.g. can’t attach PDF’s to Notes, can’t print). Your best bet will probably be to run Windows Parallels or equivalent and continue to use the Windows version of Evernote.

I already use OneNote and google docs for most of my notes and ideas etc… But I did pick up some useful tips, thanks for that. Like the TOC formatting for example. It was nice in one of my large text files

Marky,
That’s great. I’ve used it at occasion myself. Doesn’t look as nice as it does in Word (because it doesn’t leave any gaps, making it less easy to go through), but it’s still useful for those big text pages.

Great job, Ludvig.
I’ve always appreciated your ability to organize your thoughts.
I haven’t tried OneNote yet, but I do pretty much the same things with Evernote. What I really like about it is that I can search my notes on my smartphone. That’s really useful, for example:
– to read recipes while I’m cooking
– to read the shopping list while I’m shopping
– to update the daily list of what I eat
– to keep track of my exercises at the gym
– to write down ideas whenever they pop up

Nice & meaty post! Seeing your passion for OneNote definitely makes me want to take a look at it. I’ve been using Evernote forever, and I use it as much as you use yours. But new tools can bring about new results. (…oh man, I might have to tweet that.)

I love your “copy/study/steal category”. That is so awesome! I just might have to steal that one, myself. ;-) Great post!

Robb,
I think you can do just about the same things on Evernote. Except maybe the macros? I know it’s possible to migrate and export notes from OneNote to Evernote. But I don’t know if you can export the other way…

Very interesting stuff, Ludwig, and useful. My opinion (whether or not you want it) is that you are at your best with this sort of thing. Doesn’t matter if the post was long; the person who didn’t finish it was not the person who could have benefited.

It sounds like “One Note” does a lot of things that can be done with a spreadsheet. I have one that does those things for me, as well as keeping my calender/schedule. But a pen or pencil and a bit of paper is a remarkably powerful mnemonic and organizational tool. Merely the act of writing something down, even if you don’t keep the note, provides a potent boost to memory. Writing things down is a very powerful tool for both remembering and understanding. If there is no paper handy and something is really important, I use the “dog rule”: sixty seconds is enough to rule the mind. If you repeat something to yourself continuously for one minute, it will be committed to long term memory.

Dreaming (lucid or otherwise) is an exception to the “write it down” rule, at least in my experience. The act of writing seems to dispel dream memories almost instantly, perhaps because of the focus required to transform impressions into words. I have never found a solution to this difficulty.

Concerning the first paragraph of this post, however, I admit that when I first read it I anticipated something rather different: to wit, that time is well spent not by writing /things/, but by verbalizing /thoughts about things/; that is, by the brutest exercise of the intellectual faculties. Writing a blog is, perhaps, the mental equivalent of deadlifting, as you well know.

Naomi,
That’s nice. Is it about storing and using information in general?

“Your detail is great. You’ve left no stone unturned. ”
–Thanks. This is the longest I have ever spent on a post. It probably took like 10 hours in total. But I think it’s going to be very useful for others a long time into the future.

10 hours! Holy cow. Sometimes posts just have to have the ‘meat’. If the reader really wants to benefit from what you’ve written, they will just get on with it.

I’ve always been VERY creative, but my creativity was like bursts of energy and random thoughts. No smooth rhythm at all! So when I first started out I found it difficult to focus it and use it to my benefit.

The system of organizing was the missing key I needed.
But I’ve been meaning to start one for what I eat too. I diet most of the time, to what suits me. I just want to monitor my nutrition intake, calories that kind of thing.

I’ve never thought about monitoring ‘sleep’ either like you suggested. But I am now!

No problem. Funny, it was the same for me 1,5 years ago. I hadn’t even heard about OneNote.

“Btw how long time do you think it takes before i start seeing results?”
–I’ve no idea. In the short-term (a few days?) you should notice that you retain information better and that your thinking becomes a bit clearer. In the long-term (1+ month) you’ll see most of the positive effects I mentioned in the post.

I use OneNote almost exactly like you, except my commonplace is not as comprehensive (yet!).

I keep several logs, which I add to during the day and/or before bed. One log for personal mind clutter and general introspection; one log where I try to find patterns between my nutrition and sleep quality (using the Sleep Cycle app to track that); additional logs to track experiments I am doing (like trying a polyphasic sleep schedule at the moment). Also just started keeping a dream journal so I can more easily remember dreams and get lucid dreams.

I also keep notes on the books I read, and good articles I read online. And I started writing articles again, so I’ve got a dedicated notebook for that as well.

You’re far ahead of where I was at your age. I did however keep lucid dreaming logs from age 16-20. Haven’t done it for the last 3 years though.

Cool about the articles. If there’s one you think I might like, let me know. Also, let me know about the polyphasic sleep schedule. I tried that when I was 21, but it sucked for me. Biphasic works for me though.

I wish I were like Buckminster Fuller and could do the Dymaxion sleep schedule. That’d give me a lot more waking hours.

That’s a long time keeping a journal! Did you have (many) lucid dreams? Do you think it has or could have some advantages “in real life”?

If I write an article I think is worth reading — sure, I’ll send it to you! I’m thinking of starting some kind of blog/website again, but if I do I have to be able to include personal, first-hand experiences in the content, and not just vomit clichés… I’m thinking of something related to self-experimentation / cognitive boosting / nutrition & brain function / productivity / social awareness stuff, that I have tried out and analysed first-hand. But I don’t know yet, I’ll see.

Maybe I shouldn’t rant about it in your comment field, hehe. If you got some suggestions or interesting overall thoughts on the subject, let me know (when/if you got time)!

I’ll let you know how the polyphasic sleeping goes. So far I’m on day 4 and haven’t made any significant “progress”. Still having a hard time falling asleep for naps :)

As for lucid dreaming: No. It was cool, and I had some very interesting experiences. But it wasn’t worth all the time it took practicing it. And I don’t have lucid dreams very often at all nowadays. I had to practice like crazy to be able to do it, and I wasn’t able to benefit from it at all in the long-term.

[…] is that to thrive in the information society, you need to be good at handling a lot of information. You need to be good at learning things. You need to understand what the information means — and how you can use […]

Insightful comment

Great tip Ludvig! Thoughts:
1. I love your idea of alternating between creative days and implementation days. I veer more to the creative side and find I have to 'mono-focus' to get boring stuff done. I can't switch well between the two types of work in the same day.
An easy to remember summary of this principle:
Creative days – brainstorm solo, and go with the flow
All other days – exe [...]